Puzzles have an artistic and educational appeal as well as presenting an intellectual challenge. Typically, puzzles are assembled by matching a number of interlocking irregularly cut puzzle pieces to form a planar pictorial illustration on the surface of the puzzle. The assembling of a puzzle by a child user enhances physical skills (hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills), cognitive skills (visual discrimination, sorting, classifying, analyzing, deducing), and emotional skills (patience with a reward for completion) as well as providing play value.
However, storage of puzzles with an associated set of puzzle pieces is problematic for parents, schools, child care facilities, and the like, because pieces often become lost or mixed with other sets of puzzle pieces. Storing them as a cohesive unit would be advantageous.
Display of a finished puzzle provides similar challenges. Though the pieces of a finished puzzle can be glued together or fixedly attached to a puzzle base for display (such as by permanently gluing the puzzle pieces to the base, thereby preventing detachment and allowing vertical display on a wall), this operation precludes repeat assembly. Therefore, the skill enhancement opportunities and play value of the puzzle are limited.
Further, a single baseplate may not be as large as desired, and it would, therefore, be advantageous to connect two or more baseplates for enhanced play value. Or it may be advantageous to reduce shipping costs by shipping two or more baseplates that are connected before putting the puzzle together.
Therefore, there is a need for a puzzle that provides amusement and an educational challenge for the child user while providing pieces that are easily attachable to create a cohesive unit for storage or display and are releasable for repeat play and that optionally enables the connection of multiple baseplates.